Finally Dame Carol Black’s report on the health of the working age is out, Working for a healthier tomorrow.
The rhetoric is great, especially if you are an occupational health practitioner, but what will it mean in practice? This begs a lot of questions. Leaving aside the stuff that’s been trailed already (sick notes, sorry ‘well notes’, consensus statements) the big ideas are:
- a massive increase in occupational health provision so that out of work people have access, as a way of getting anyone fit enough to work to get a job,
- a ‘fit for work service’, multidisciplinary and based on case management provided nationally to all working age people by a mixture of NHS, orivate and voluntary suppliers.
Will the new fit for work service lead to a bun fight about who controls it? Already the OH doctors’ body the Society of Occupational Medicine has demanded doctors should be in charge and asking for 1800 more OH physicians to be trained. Why not OH nurses?
And will we need to train thousands more OH nurses? The funding? How to get employers on board? Any suggestions?